Changeling (26 page)

‘Good. That’s good,’ Lucien said, nodding his head slightly.

‘Shall I call Alexa? She and Tom could jump in a cab and be here in no time. She’ll be mortified that she wasn’t here when you came to.’

Lucien shook his head and looked up at him sadly.

‘Do you need anything, Lucien?’ Trey asked anxiously. ‘Is there anything that I can do for you?’

‘I’m dying, Trey. There is nothing that you or anyone else can do about that.’ He pulled Trey closer. ‘You are a very special person, Trey Laporte, and I am sad that we will not have much more time together. Tell Alexa that I love her.’

He closed his eyes and drifted back into unconsciousness, his hand slipping away from Trey’s. Trey looked at him and grabbed for the medical pager.

Alexa blamed herself for not being there when her father had come round and vowed that she would not leave the room again – she would sleep in the chair at night to be with him.

In the days that followed, the three of them – Alexa, Trey and Tom – drifted around the apartment, desperately trying not to hover outside Lucien’s room, but rushing up to question any medical staff that came to the door for news about his condition.

At dinner one evening they all sat around the table in the kitchen doing their best to seem interested in the food that Mrs Magilton had put out for them. They had not discussed what Lucien had said about his dying, but this evening Alexa brought it up and asked Trey to repeat what her father had said. Tom was unusually quiet, tapping at his bottom lip with the handle of his spoon, lost in thought, and not joining in with their discussion about Lucien’s health.

Eventually Trey couldn’t take it any more. ‘Tom, what is it that you know and aren’t telling us?’

‘Hmmm? Oh, I was just thinking about what Lucien said about nobody being able to help him.’

‘And . . .’

‘Well, it’s not quite true. There is somebody who is able to help him.’

Trey’s heart gave a little flutter at the way that Tom had said this, and he looked intensely at the older man.

‘Who is it, Tom? Who can help him?’

Tom looked at the table, before glancing back at the two teenagers staring intently at him.

‘Alexa’s mother. Lucien’s wife, Gwendolin.’ The words came out of his mouth like an apology, and the big Irishman looked down at his plate.

Alexa shook her head. ‘My mother’s dead,’ she said.

‘She isn’t dead, Alexa,’ Tom said. ‘Your father told you that to make it easier for you to forget her. She left your father for Caliban. She’s his sorceress.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘I’m sorry that I had to tell you this, Alexa. Your father didn’t wish for you to know what she had become. She has changed so much. But she has an item – Mynor’s Globe – which is the only thing that might be able to save Lucien’s life.’

‘Then we have to get it,’ Trey said. ‘How do we find her?’

Tom still had his eyes glued to Alexa. ‘She lives in a place that straddles this world and the Netherworld. It’s called the Tower of Leroth, but it will be no easy task to even get there, let alone steal the globe from her. The estate has no static location, but changes its position as it forms new bridges between the demon plane and this one.’

Silence hung over the room like a curse.

‘How could this item help Lucien?’ Trey asked, breaking the spell.

‘It has extraordinary powers of healing. Especially for nether-creatures. I believe that it could restore Lucien to full health again.’

Alexa stood up, the scrape of her chair against the ceramic tiles cutting through the kitchen like a saw. The two men looked up at her, waiting to see what would happen next.

‘Then what are we waiting for?’ she said. ‘We’d better work out how we are going to reunite me with my “dead” mother and save my father’s life.’

Tom also stood up, his face set resolutely. ‘We also have a traitor to find. And believe me, when I do, they’ll wish that they had never heard the name of Lucien Charron.’

Relations between the human realm and the Netherworld have always been complex and secretive, distorted by myth and the dark art of storytelling. Rarely have they been openly aggressive. Demons have always been among us (you may think you have met one or two). For most of our history, the comings and goings of the Netherworld’s hellish inhabitants were strictly controlled by the all-powerful demon lords who ruled over them – not because the demon lords held any love for the human race, but because it served their interests to control the portal between the worlds. The realms coexisted, with secret contracts and treaties governing their contact and occasional violent skirmishes when these were breached. But the events documented in this book show that we are in a new era: the vampire Caliban and his cohort are bolder and more aggressive, the demon lords hold no sway over them, and the old lore is no longer relevant.

It may be useful for you to know more about the foe we are facing, so with the help of Lucien Charron’s researchers we have compiled a basic guide to the creatures of the Netherworld for humans new to demon life and lore.

(Netherworld slang names:
vamps, bloodjunkies, leeches, haemoholics)

Descendants of an ancient race, vampires have lived among humankind since time began. They see themselves as the ultimate predators – and humans as little more than another link in their food chain. They need us for survival, and, in a sense, this gives us an advantage over them. Through the centuries humans have hunted them down and destroyed them or banished them to the Netherworld. But their bloodlust will always drive them back to the human realm.

Now the vampires have risen to power within the Netherworld, vanquishing the old demon lords. They want to use their power to raise an army of nether-creatures and ultimately to rule in the human realm.

(Netherworld slang names:
lycos, wolfmen, furboys, helldogs
)

Wolf/human shapeshifters enslaved to the power of the full moon. The usual lycanthrope form is the Wolfan, which is ferocious and formidable but has no control over its urges to kill and feed during the full moon. Much rarer is the lyco who can adopt the bimorphic form, which means they can transform at will. The bimorph stands upright, in full control of its powers, combining the force of the human mind with the physical power of the beast. This hybrid form, however, can only be achieved by naturals (hereditary werewolves born to two werewolf parents) who wear an Amulet of Theiss.* Huge and powerful creatures with super-acute senses, they are among the very few creatures (nether or human) feared by vampires.